re: The Cracker Barrel controversy is only tangentially about politics or "wokeness"

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People 18-49 still go to eat there because that’s where their parents took them. The nostalgia doesn’t end with the older generation.

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that's a fact. I love movies with cars from the 40s and 50s because they are cool as hell and I wasnt even born when they were on the road

The 18 to 49 crowd in my locale, and a lot of older folks, and this is certainly anecdotal, YMMV, pack out Waffle House. And the last few breakfasts I have had there have been vastly superior to Cracker Barrel.

Waffle House is one of the few places that I think is better now than it was 20 years ago.

Honestly, the decor was always kitschy and a lot of places have similar sort of junk sale objects on their walls. I don't think anyone went there for that. The issue is more that their food sucks now, they have gone down a lot in quality of both service and the food itself.

Also, people are sick of changing stuff. They see a gimmicky reset and know that it's just management doing what management now does, creating change to manage change. Quality and stability don't matter to the boardroom. They want new innovative ideas and they want to see those turn into higher stock prices.

They see the woke political statements and wonder WTF this has to do with poorly cooked ham and biscuits. 5 years ago CB stock was trading at 150/share and now it's 53/share. After this failed reset fades they'll kick the CEO out, she'll get a golden parachute and go into some other area of elite change management and the next CEO will "hear" the cries of the customer and return some to something akin to what they used to be. That will be the change he'll manage and the whole crappy system continues. The only way it stops is if enough of the American consumer stops rewarding crappy CEOs and their companies by avoiding places like CB and opting for higher quality but similar alternatives. Like waffle house!

Not disagreeing with what you wrote, but I think there's another component to big media's obsession with youth over age. They don't see themselves as purveyors of information, they want to influence opinions and beliefs. They want to guide the electorate and the country in their preferred direction. As people get older, it's harder to change their minds. Younger people are more malleable, more swayed by pressure to conform to consensus opinions.

Maybe, but I think it boils down to old=bad and new=good.

A lot of those people are trapped in bubbles when it comes to their views of “young people.”

And this is going on 60 years ago but the poster who brought up CBS canceling all those rural comedies that were still high in the ratings (and shortly thereafter Gunsmoke which had an older and non urban audience) was right on target with the connection here.

There is a certain amount of wanting the “right kind” of 18 to 49 customers involved, absolutely, and it skews to focusing on cities because there has been data that shows young people gravitating to urban areas, I don’t know if that has changed.

But again it’s a case of Cracker Barrel being what it is and 180 degrees removed from an urban brand. Although you wonder if it hasn’t crossed this woman’s mind to try to stick one in Times Square.

It's nothing more than the transition from Capitalism to communism. Communism erases the past, changes the vocabulary to totally reinvent the culture. The parasite is trying to attach itself to its next host to feed off until it is ultimately destroyed. America is that host.

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Cracker Barrel IMO is the same way as far as an ingrained image. It is what it is. You cannot change it, you cannot remake it, you cannot escape it.

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Agreed. Same as an old friend who relocated his business into a renovated Pizza Hut years ago. Know how he describes the location to anyone over 25?